News Release

May 05, 2011SCALE Establishes Lecture Series

This semester, the SCALE Lecture Series was established to bring in experts on everything from white collar crime to homeland security to human rights, and allow them to share their insight and experiences with students and faculty. Professor Harriet Rolnick, Director of the SCALE Program, said, "The Lecture Series adds another dimension to SCALE, providing greater exposure to substantive areas of law not covered in the curriculum, an international perspective, and further insights into the realities of law practice." In its inaugural series, speakers included Gordon Greenberg, Partner, McDermott Will & Emery LLP; Paul Irving, former Assistant Director U.S. Secret Service (Ret.); and Professor Irene Banias, Assistant Professor of Human Rights, Bogazici University, Istanbul.

In his talk, "The Flat World of Money Laundering Enforcement," Mr. Greenberg spoke about how the money laundering laws have evolved and expanded to become valuable to the Department of Justice, allowing U.S. prosecutors to invoke extraterritorial jurisdiction over former foreign leaders and multinational corporations to a degree unheard of in non-colonial times. He also discussed conflicts of laws and foreign policy concerns.

Mr. Irving presented, "Homeland Security: One insider's account - The creation of a new department, related issues, and a look at an established, yet emerging, area of law. Are we any safer today?" In addition to the early history surrounding the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, this lecture provided an inside view of executive and legislative branch action that created a new department. This action entailed the reorganization of 22 agencies, 180,000 employees, and $34 billion in federal spending. The discussion also briefly touched on related issues of immigration; dealing with foreign governments, foreign nationals, and terrorist financing; supply chain security, border and transportation security, and infrastructure protection; export control; and cyber security.

Professor Banias provided "Highlights from the European System for the Protection of Human Rights," a lecture that focused on the most advanced and successful regional human rights system, which the Council of Europe implemented in 1949. Her speech explored the legal sources of this system, its evolution, the institutions it created and the rights it guarantees. It also analyzed a landmark case from the European Court on Human Rights.